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The genesis of this book was in the post-prandial phase of hospitality sitting around a table at a hotel’s outdoor restaurant in July 2005 that overlooked a sparkling cobalt-blue Adriatic sea; the occasion was the farewell dinner of the first Critical Tourism Studies Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Whilst our colleagues boogied on the veranda, we tangoed with the work we had each been doing covering New Zealand boutique accommodation and bed and breakfasts, Turkish cave homes and Scottish commercial homes. We identified similarities in terms of our small accommodation focus and our largely qualitative approaches, and enriching differences in our emerging narrative interpretations, ideologies and viewpoints, such as gendered perspectives. We saw potential value in a larger academic community drawn from a range of disciplines to explore this highly complex and socially significant phenomenon in …